A/N: This chapter is actually a one-shot that comes before the next part in the series; however one-shots don't make it as far on as they do on AO3, so I decided to post this as part of the main story. Read it anyway, it's still relevant, and the first chapter of the next story will be up soon.

Got No Direction, Just Got My Vamp

The threads of life will take one many different places.

Steve Rogers' thread, for example, took him from Brooklyn - intertwined with a Bucky Barnes - to overseas, fighting in the infantry, where plenty of other threads stopped. Then home, parting with the thread of one Miss Peggy Carter, and winding all over America, stopping monster threads along the way. Bucky's thread was lost to a flooded river, and Steve's thread met Tony Stark's. And so on.

Loki Laufeyson's thread had taken him from England to Iceland to America, criss-crossing all those countries. He really hadn't expected it to end up where it did.

Purgatory. The Afterlife of Monsters. Where the souls of Eve's children preyed on each other for all eternity.

When Loki woke up in Purgatory, he'd been half-expecting the whole thing to be an elaborate lie by Amora and he'd just be dead. Instead he was lying on a bed of leaves, wearing the thin v-neck and black jeans he'd died in.

Loki sat up, looking around at where he was. Trees everywhere, blotting out the sky in places, like the forests Loki had stayed in shortly after becoming a vampire. It was dusk, though the absence of light seemed perpetual, and there was a thin fog in the air. It wasn't too bad. Not like you'd expect, fire and chains and eternal damnation.

"Hey!" A voice said. "There's someone!"

Loki got to his feet, fast, feeling a surprising burst of satisfaction when his body responded vampirically. Fuck yes. Back to normal.

There were three or four figures walking towards him though the mist.

Loki's nose identified them as vampires, and they seemed vaguely familiar.

"It is the Burison boy, ja?" One of them said with a thick Russian accent.

Loki knew him. He'd killed him, back in the Alpha's mansion. "Greetings." Loki said awkwardly.

"Looks like someone got you back." The Russian vampire grinned, pulling a blade from his clothing. "I think you should run."

Unarmed, that was exactly what Loki did. He crashed over roots, moving swiftly, knowing that he was evenly matched by the vampires after his skin.

They were gaining on him. Jelly-limbed and uncoordinated from his sudden appearance in a new dimension as a vampire, he was going to lose this race. But Loki's brain had always been his most valuable asset, and it could help him now.

It only took him a few moments of hurried sprinting to do the calculation.

He put on another burst of speed, let his pace get bouncier, then pushed off the ground as hard as he could.

Thunk! Loki hit a knot on a tree where a broken branch had been, pushed off again using his momentum, and managed to snatch a lower canopy branch and haul himself upwards. It was a performance that would have shamed most human gymnasts. But Loki wasn't human.

The trees were tall, extremely so, and Loki could tell by squinting through the mist that finding the branch he was on - about nine or ten metres off the ground - was an enormous stroke of luck. The other vampires couldn't follow without either climbing one of the trees, which was nearly impossible with the smooth bark and lack of branches, or repeating Loki's maneouver, which was probably impossible.

As he went to shimmy higher into the tree, Loki became aware of the fact he'd ripped the seat of his pants, just below the back pocket. Goddamnit. He'd have to steal some new pants as soon as possible.

Actually, he'd have to steal quite a lot of things when the opportunity arose.

First was first. The vampires under the tree.

"Vere are you, little Burison?" The Russian vampire shouted. "You vill have to come down eventually! There's no food up there!"

Loki peeked his head down. "Actually, I think I shall be just fine where I am. Unless you think you could follow me...?"

Judging by their looks of frustration, they couldn't.

"We'll catch you eventually." Another vampire chuckled. "I mean, we're here for the rest of eternity."

"We shall see about that." Loki said, grasping a higher branch and hauling himself upwards to be hidden in the thick canopy.

As children, Thor and Loki had both been seasoned tree climbers, and Loki could feel the years of experience coming back to him. Where you placed your feet and hands, how far you could jump...it was all experience.

This was like being on the run. For a vampire like Loki to survive in a natural envirionment, all he needed was food and shelter. Other essentials for life didn't apply to him.

To survive in Purgatory, he was also going to need weapons. So food, weapons and shelter.

The trees would work for shelter. At least in this area, they were too tall to climb for most low-power monsters, and the stronger ones hopefully weren't interested in hunting him. Of course, he'd need to devise a way to climb them himself without the ridiculous stroke of luck he'd had, but it was much safer than staying on the ground, where anything could happen. Maybe finding a way to spike his shoes?

Food. Loki had no idea what monsters were even vaguely edible, having only preyed on humans and animals. Vampires didn't need to feed often, so he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

Finally, weapons, which were bound to be in the hands of the strong or smart. With everyone on high alert in a place like this, pickpocketing wasn't going to happen, and considering Loki was unarmed, he wasn't about to take anyone by force. If they were humans, maybe, but Loki didn't have a strength or speed advantage against fellow monsters. Maybe he could loot a corpse? He'd have to be fast.

Looting was probably his only option for new pants, too. The dilemma was now: did he run around in tight jeans with a rip across the ass, which would restrict his climbing ability, or ditch the pants entirely and hope that black satin boxers were enough clothing for the tree life?

He compromised by tearing the legs off and being extremely fashionable in denim short shorts. Oh, how Tony would laugh if he could see him now.

Tony.

The sudden action, passion of being suddenly chased, had woken Loki up. It had been stupid of him to think Tony was leaving him, and just as stupid to think signing a deal with Amora was anything but bad.

But Thor's soul was back now, so it wasn't all bad.

This sudden realisation of fact, that Loki was in the wrong, made Loki feel absurdly bitter against Amora. If he was still on Earth, he'd vow to hunt her down. Here in Purgatory, he was stuck.

Humans made it out of Hell, right? As demons. Free thinking demons. A little twisted, but living creatures. And Heaven had angels - though Loki had no idea whether they were dead humans or what.

So you could leave the afterlife, even if you were a bit messed up when you did.

Loki didn't mind being a little messed up. He couldn't get much lower than he already was.

If it was possible, he would go and get revenge on Amora for being a bitchy cunt of a demon. Then he could die and be settled.

Meanwhile, he needed to be armed.

-O.O-

Loki had been in the trees two days, leaping around, keeping hidden and off the ground, when he spotted his first serious altercation.

There were fights all the time, of course. Put a bunch of monsters in a confined space, and that was what you got.

But this was a massacre - a group of about a dozen vampires, living in a pack, fighting a group of arachne. It was a mess, web everywhere, and Loki could see the same crude knifes made of hewn rock and bone that the Russian vampire - who was in the battle - had been holding.

The battle was next to a pond, and had been getting closer and closer to the water, meaning the corpses of the first few slain were off to the side a little.

Now was his chance, if ever. Loki leapt from tree to tree to get to the edge of the forest, waited until no one was watching at all, and swooped down to land in a crouch roll on the mossy ground. Then he dove forward to the corpse of a female arachne and stripped her of her crappy little dirk and a chain, a real metal chain, wherever that had come from.

The next monster he looted was a vampire who looked like a teenage boy. With his long legs and skinny hips, he was probably an okay match in clothing sizes for Loki.

Loki stole the vampire's pants, jacket, and badly made bludgeon. Score!

He was suddenly conscious of eyes on him. Loki turned, dirk and bludgeon at the ready, prepared to fight, when the Russian vampire - Vanko - grabbed him and pinned him against a tree by his shoulder, bringing his stone blade to his throat.

Reacting instinctively, Loki buried the knife in Vanko's neck, and when he was released smashed the other vampire's ribs with the stone bludgeon.

Loki knew he was going to be attacked again, so he dumped the stone bludgeon, stuffed the chain, pants and jacket in his shirt and used the dirk to stab through a low tree's trunk and desperately scramble up.

After leaping deeper into the forest, Loki felt safe enough to stop, ditch his short shorts, tug on the pants and jacket, and settle in the crown of a tall tree to sleep for a few hours.

As he dozed, Loki pondered the short battle he'd been in. He'd been reacting out of pure instinct, not a moment's thought, and it had worked well. Maybe letting the vamp take over would be better for conflicts?

-O.O-

Loki had been living in Purgatory for a month now. He'd been marking days by cutting notches in the tall tree he'd taken to living in.

The tree was a home like he'd never expected. It was insanely difficult to get to, seeing as you had to start from the lower trees near the ponds and then do a few death-defying leaps, past some traps Loki had set, and know exactly where to place your feet. Loki's home hadn't been breached once yet, not even by arachne, who lived about three or four kilometres away in the trees.

The home itself was basically a glorified nest. Clint would have approved. The whole thing was wrapped in dried branches, forming a crude bowl shape, and Loki had hacked away the branches in the middle to give himself some kind of a floor. Lifting rocks from the riverbed up to here had been hard work, but worth it, because he had a viable firepit for when the night came, such as a weird darkening of the sky could be called. There was even a mat of looted clothing for him to sleep on. Considering the standards in those parts, that was luxury.

Loki had also acquired a rather nice collection of weapons looted or stolen. Knives, ranging from stubby dirks to cleavers; bludgeons and axes; a sickle; all these were hidden in a secret place in his nest. He only took a few at a time when he went out for food or knowledge, in case he died and they were taken.

He had already been killed half a dozen times in various ways. The worst, in his opinion, had been his unfortunate consumption by what he had later learned was called a Leviathan.

Chewed bloody and swallowed almost whole; a nasty way to go.

Vanko's crew had gotten their revenge once, taking advantage of a broken arm he'd gotten by scrapping with a werewolf to trap him on the ground and hack his head off.

One time Loki had misjudged a jump between trees and had fallen fifteen metres, snapping his neck and leaving him paralysed for a very amused pair of skinwalkers to turn into dogs and tear him apart for food.

Generally, it was open game on hunting other monsters. They came back to life anyway. There was no lower form of death for monsters than Purgatory.

News of Loki's appearance had spread to a decent number of vampires there, meaning any chance of him joining a pack was non-existent. Vampires were some of the tougher creatures there, and their ability to cooperate in packs helped.

Food was sparse. There weren't many creatures Loki could eat without getting sick, and most of them knew by now to stay away from the vampire part of the forest.

The forest itself went on forever, or so Loki could tell. The very few conversations he'd had with other creatures would indicate so.

That was all the talking Loki did. It simply wasn't necessary.

A lot of things weren't necessary. He'd mostly given up talking, and had decided to curb any deep thoughts on his destiny. Day to day he found himself letting the vamp in him take over and run the show. It was just easier.

The only thoughts Loki went into with any depth were thoughts of his revenge against Amora, leaving Purgatory, or of Tony, Thor or Frigga. Aside from that, it was just shallow blankness, day in, day out.

A tiny part of human-Loki knew that he'd stop thinking about those things, too, soon enough.

It was more peaceful that way. Give up humanity, go full monster. So simple and easy.

Since entering Purgatory, Loki had learned and relearned a number of useful skills. Tree climbing, obviously, but others too, like knife throwing, chain-whipping, swimming, hand-to-hand combat, building, crafting knives, and scenting. It had taken a while, but he was adapted to living in such a harsh environment.

The main notable thing about day 30 was that it was the last time Loki thought about Amora and leaving Purgatory.

He stopped thinking about Frigga the next day, and Tony and Thor were fading memories.

On day 34, Loki's fates finally changed.

The vampire had been killed two days ago, struck down by a knife through the ribs and then beheaded without a chance for survival, and he'd wanted revenge.

He'd had it. Bloody and satisfying. Oh god yes.

Loki was running on instinct and almost no sentience as he headed back to the pond for the trapeze act of getting home.

Climb, branch, branch, leap, run, branch, avoid trap, etc. No brain input required.

After a few minutes, he was back home, climbing over the little wall into his nest.

There was a girl sitting on his mat.

She smelled a little like a Leviathan.

Loki growled, pulling out two knives and getting ready to fight.

"Shh, Loki." The girl said soothingly. "It's okay. You're not so far gone you don't understand me. Talk to me."

That confused Loki. The girl had used his name. No one used his name. He was the Burison boy.

"Leviathan?" He managed questioningly.

"No, not a Leviathan. Come on, Loki. Talk properly. I'm here for your brain, not for a feral vampire." The girl urged.

"Feral." Loki said, another question.

"Yes, feral. Try talking in longer sentences." She said patiently. "Here, this is for you."

She held out a metal knife to him. Actual metal. And it was inscribed with curious markings.

"Who are you? What is that?" Loki said, feeling a bit of human curiousity make it through vampiric instinct.

"Consider the knife a gesture of solidarity. And I'm a girl with a plan, Mr Laufeyson." She smiled. "Have a seat. And do try to talk more."

"I cannot recall ever being asked to talk more." Loki replied. More human was bleeding through by the moment.

"Well, now's your chance, my son." She patted the mat, indicating for Loki to sit. "Tell me; what's Amora been doing?"